Rice Cake with mushroom, cabbage, dried shrimp, minced pork

Stir fried bok choy

Combination Platter – smoked chicken, roast pork, bbq pork, jellyfish

Steamed Red Snapper – soy sauce, green scallion, ginger, garlic

Tofu, mushroom, beef balls, oyster, black moss, sea cucumber

Curry Beef – tender beef, potato, lemongrass and spices

Stir fried shrimp and bell peppers

Braised Pork Trotter, snow peas, baby corn, carrot, mushroom

A Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! A little different format for this post as it’s all homecooked versus dishes you find at a restaurant. Perhaps this is a good segway to injecting some recipe type entries onto this site! 🙂 As you can see, we ate very well this past weekend with some people dear to me. What a great way to bring in the New Lunar Year! The dishes above are based on my family’s Malaysian Chinese decent, so what you may have could be similar in some while different in others.

For the most part, a lot of the dishes above have a strong symbolic meaning. And let me preface that such symbolisms are derived in part of the tones/pronunciation for the produce or protein. For example, the way you might say “fish” in Chinese/Taiwanese, has the same pronunciation to the word that is defined to be “surplus or remain”. Because of that similarity, it is very typical for families to have fish to consume the day before the new year, as it is just as important to leave some of that same fish for the first dinner of the new year; this action ties in the definition of “surplus or remain” in combination of the consumption of “fish”.

Some other dualities or foods we ate, symbolizing good meanings, were:

• Pork – a ton of blessings
• Rice cake – Is the official food of some forms of lunar new year celebration. Symbolizes compounded prosperity
• Black moss – good luck or exceeded wealth
• Shrimp – happiness and great fortune
• Black mushroom – longevity
• Tofu that is fried – gold
• Sea Cucumber – happiness
• Green leafy vegetables (bok choy) – close family ties

For those who celebrated, I hope this is a great year for you! As friends and families have hinted, if you were not successful with your resolution when Jan 1, 2013 had hit, maybe the Lunar New Year will be a good second chance 🙂 May the year of the snake bring wealth, good health, and happiness to all.

Thanks for swinging by!
-MW

Lunar New Year (information gathered 2/2013)
Cultures that celebrate this day:
Chinese/Taiwanese New Year
Japanese New Year (before 1873)
Korean New Year (Seollal)
Mongolian New Year (Tsagaan Sar)
Tibetan New Year (Losar)
Vietnamese New Year (T?t)

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References:

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